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Someone told me about a place in Wilmington, North Carolina, that sells tea brewed from “some weird drug called kratom that’s illegal in Thailand.” The place—a tiki bar called Kat 5 Kava that doesn’t serve alcohol—is like some sort of toned-down methadone clinic or legal opium den, I heard. I was intrigued. Even though it’s been around for some time, the media is calling kratom a “new legal drug.” A tree native to Thailand, kratom leaves are harvested and dried to create the drug, which was banned there in 1943, after people had started to use it as an opium alternative and the government realized it wasn’t being taxed. Last week, I was out drinking at a bar down the street from Kat 5 Kava, so I stopped in to try a cup of kratom tea. Inside the establishment, a group of people sat sluggishly at a table near a bar that was surrounded by multiple screens playing nature videos of whales swimming in the ocean and deer frolicking in the woods. I looked at the menu on the wall. Half of it … Read More